some gems are clearly presented as more masculine and others as more feminine
Yeah, that's actually exactly the same thing my girlfriend said.
In fact...
I am convinced that Dia is female, and Bort is male for instance. Cinnabar seems male to me also
Those are the exact divisions she had in mind too.
The subs I have always refer to Phos as a he but they may well be wrong.
Those subs are actually following the Japanese dialogue to a tee, then. Phos has always been referred to as
kare, Japanese for "he". That's been true of all the gems so far.
The only exception to the blanket male gender designation has been Octowaifu— I mean
Ventricosus.
She's referred to by her sibling as
ane, Japanese for "elder sister". In turn, she refers to Aculeasis as
otōto, "younger brother".
What subbed version are you watching, if you don't mind me asking, Lordhippos?
to the gem people the gender is probably unimportant I suppose
It's quite interesting because, to the gems, gender is simply not something they have any familiarity with. They don't have reproductive organs, so it's a non-factor. It always amuses me when Motoko Kusanagi, the main character in
Ghost in the Shell, gets referred to as a "female cyborg" because, well, again, with no reproductive organs, how
can she be? (And yet I just used "she" there.
)
For the record, in Japanese, when referring to a group of males, you use the male plural form; for a group of females, you use the female plural form; and for a mixed group, you're back to using the male form again.
Side note: The Octowaifu is voiced by the same VA as Senjougahara from Monogatari in the JPN audio
Indeed. I ended up looking that up as well. She also voices Homura in
Madoka Magica. Woo-hoo!
Another episode with outstanding art, as I've come to expect from this series and the OP/EDs are still a jam to listen to.
And the animation accompanying them is excellent too.
By the way, anyone else think that that last shot of Phos in the OP as she gets up off the floor and walks away from camera looks like it's motion-captured? It looks quite uncanny, and
very feminine.
.